John Smith Prather V was born 05 July 1837 in LaGrange, GA, and died 1920. He married Susan Hampton Verdery 1860, daughter of Augustus Verdery and Augustus Verdery. She died 26 June 1928 in Brookhaven, GA.
Notes for John Smith Prather V:
John Smith Prather V. married Susan Hamptom Verdery, daughter of, Augustus Nicholas Verdery, of Augusta, Ga. at the home of her sister, Mrs Warren Akin, in Cassville Ga., in 1810.
John Smith Prather V. began his business life as a very young man in LaFayette, Ala. where his father purchased for him a printing office in which he set his own type and printed and published a little country newspaper, "The Chambers County Tribune".
He was always very industrious and very competent, so that whatever he did all his life long was perfectly well done. Finally the war between the states came on. This caused him to enlist in the Confederate Army and he was Commissioned a Lieutenant of Cavalry by the Governor of Alabama and was ordered to report to Gen. Ben McCullough. Gen. McCullough sent him to Gen. Leonidas Polk, at Columbus, Kentucky. Gen. Polk appointed him Post Quartermaster. This position he resigned for "active service in the field".
In resigning he returned himself non commissioned to the ranks but as he was able to furnish his own horse, equipment and body servant he was put into the Cavalry rather than the Infantry service. He was at first placed on Out Post Duty to the evacuation of Columbus and covered the retreat of the Confederate Army to Corinth, Mississippi.
Because of his talents as an executive he rose rapidly in rank and following the Battle of Shiloh he was ordered to report as Colonel Prather to General Joseph Wheeler, chief of Cavalry in June 1862. He participated in all of Gen. Wheeler's great battles and in many of his minor engagements. Col. Prather was repeatedly complimented by Gen. Wheeler in his "General Orders" for bravery and soldierly conduct in battle.
After the battle of Atlanta, he was placed in command of the regiment, the 8th Confederate Cavalry, a Brigade by Gen. Brauregard and Gen. Hardee in Macon, Ga.
He was therefore "Brigadier-by-Brevet" and because of the confusion of Jefferson Davis and the Confederate Government in Richmond his Commission as General could not reach the Army in Georgia at once, he held the rank of Brigadier-By-Brevel until the close of the Civil War.
He was with Gen. Bragg in the battle of Perryville, Murfresboro, Chickamauga and Missionary Ridge, with Gen. Johnston at Dalton, Resaco and Kennesaw, and with Gen. Hood in the severe fighting in and around Atlanta.
He was with Gen. Brauregard at Macon by whose attack orders he with his brigade, attacked Sherman's right from that point to Savannah inflicting much damage on Sherman's army and capturing great numbers of prisoners, for which he received high praise from both Gen. Brauregard and Gen. Hardee.
He was with Gen. Johnston at Columbia, South Carolina, at Averysboro and Bentonville. He surrendered at Hillsboro, North Carolina in May, 1865, handing his sword to Gen. Sherman in person. Col. Prather's name is carved in the Chickamauga Monument as one of the Southern leaders in that great battle. General Sherman offered him a military escort to his home in the South but he unwisely refused this honor saying he could easily find his way on his horse to Montgomery alone.
He intended to publish a news paper in Montgomery and there to begin life anew. But as soon as he reached that city he was arrested by a detachment of Yankee troops and brought up for court martial on a charge of hanging 20 Yankee soldiers from Sherman's army who had killed a South Carolina farmer and his wife and stripped their young daughter of all of her clothing. In his trial for court martial one of the Yankee soldiers who had been a school mate of his swore that Jack Prather was not present when the incident occurred, then the court dismissed the case but after the trial this soldier warned him to leave Montgomery at once and asked him where he would go next. John Smith Prather V. answered that he could go to Opelika for his father's home was not far off from there. He immediately mounted his horse, thanked the soldier and in his battered Confederate Uniform set out for Opelika.
When about night fall he reached the road which led to LaGrange, Ga., he made a sudden decision on not to go to Opelika but rather to LaGrange and to West Point in Ga. where he hoped members of his mother's family would be able to help him get into business there.
A short distance behind him on the road also going toward Opelika and also wearing an old suit of Confederate gray was another soldier on horse back like himself. When John Smith Prather took the road to LaGrange this soldier went on toward Opelika, and that night was murdered on the road. John Smith Prather always believed that he had been Heaven directed to go to LaGrange and that the fate meted out to this soldier in grey had been intended and planned for himself.
In La Grange he learned that in Atlanta the people were begining to breathe again so he moved on farther east to that place. There he purchased an old printing press, rented a shelter and immediately began the printing and distributing in person "The New Era", the first Democratic news/paper published in the South after the War.
This paper was a financial success, and he was soon able to build a house and to bring to it, his young wife and several members of her family who were paralyzed by the terribly new conditions developing in the South.
These relatives thought that if John Smith Prather owned a literary paper or magazine it would furnish them with an opportunity to make a living by publishing in it their own stories and poems.
To assist these relatives of his wife he purchased "The Ladies Gazette". But they had over-rated their talents as poets and novelists and this paper ruined him financially. John Smith Prather then planned to go to Kentucky where he hoped relatives of his own Prather Family could assist him to get into business in Kentucky.
So with their assistance and because of the prominence and wealth of the Prather Family in Kentucky he secured a position in a publishing establishment in Paducah, when he received a telegram from his sister Sarah, who had married William Martin in Atlanta, asking him to return home at once.
Not knowing what was the difficulty in his home he returned to Atlanta at once. He found that William Martin had gotten in trouble with the Government. To free this brother-in-law from imprisonment took two years of effort with influential friends and all the money he could raise.
Of course, this forced him to give up his opening in Paducah and he went therefore into the employment of the Franklin Printing and Publishing House in Atlanta. With this Company he remained for 45 years gradually becoming a member of the firm.
John Smith Prather was a man of the purest integrity but he was hampered in all of his movements by members of his own and his wife's family who thought they could make themselves at home in his home and came to live in it entirely at his expense. One of these stayed for 22 years and died in his house, and others too, for long periods.
John Smith Prather was always interested in the development of the medical profession in Atlanta and was Secretary of The Southern Medical College during all the long years of it's residency of Dr. Thomas S. Powell.
He kept in touch close by also with the Confederate Veterans and was Commandant of Wheeler Cavalry Camp until his death in 1920. He was interred with military honors at his funeral, his body was dressed in his Confederate Uniform and covered with hundreds of tiny Confederate flags and his coffin was conveyed to the hearse under an archway of crossed swords in the hands of Confederate Veterans.
He was buried in De Kalb County Cemetery in Decatur, and on the stone gateway the ladies of the U.D.C. placed a bronze tablet in his honor. On Memorial Day he always led the parade down Peachtree Street and then out to Oakland Cemetery where the decoration of the graves of Confederate Soldiers killed in the Battle of Atlanta took place, and listened there attentively to the orations made in their honor.
His popularity in Atlanta and Georgia was very great and through his influence with the Georgia legislators he controlled the State Printing as long as he lived.
Children of John Prather and Susan Verdery are:
1172 i. Emily Twin15 Prather, born Abt. 1861.
1173 ii. Twin Eva Hampton Prather, born Abt. 1861; died Aft. 1952.
+ 1174 iii. Louise Prather, born Abt. 1863.
1175 iv. Marian Prather, born Abt. 1865.
1176 v. Clio Prather, born Abt. 1866; died 31 October 1903 in Decatur, GA.
Notes for Clio Prather:
Clio became an exquisite pianist but died of heart disease in early womanhood unmarried.
1177 vi. VI John Smith Prather, born Abt. 1867.
Additional information provided by...
FindAGrave Contributor Polsley 48089942.
His date of death is listed on the Franklin Garrett Atlanta Necrology Database.
Reference:
Franklin Garrett Atlanta Necrology: Atlanta Death Certificate; Roll 34, Frame 511, County: Other; Obituary Abstracts, Roll 23, Frame 41, County: Other (date of death listed as 12 Mar 1920); Cemetery Records; Roll 1, Frame 96, County: Dekalb
He is also mentioned in United Daughters of the Confederacy, Roster of Confederate Graves, Volume IX – Third Supplemental Volume, Georgia & Other States (2004) page 9-51 & 9-53, which includes his service record: Rank: Col., Co B 8th AL Infantry (which is mentioned in the bio). His date of birth is listed as 05 Jul 1837 and date of death as 12 Mar 1920.
----------------------------------------
"The Lafayette (AL) Sun" - May 20, 1914:
(In part)..."Your request for information regarding the old Chambers Tribune and the LaFayette Clipper received. As I (Judge James M. Richards - Weatherford, TX), at different times, owned both papers I presume I can give you such information as you desire. The Chambers Tribune was established by Johnson J. Hooper, the author of "Simon Suggs", the most humorous book of the age. Hooper was succeeded several years before the war by Joe Phillips and JNO. S. PRATHER, who continued to publish the Tribune until they went into the army. "Jack" Prather was a gallant and capable soldier and at the close of the war was in the command of a brigade, though he had been commissioned as a Colonel. He now lives in Atlanta, highly honored and respected. At the close of the war, perhaps in the latter part of 1864, publication was suspended. All business houses were out of goods, the able bodied men were off at the front, no support could be given sufficient to buy print paper, hence the suspension...."
--------- Article per Don Clark - LaFayette, AL
Notes for John Smith Prather V:
John Smith Prather V. married Susan Hamptom Verdery, daughter of, Augustus Nicholas Verdery, of Augusta, Ga. at the home of her sister, Mrs Warren Akin, in Cassville Ga., in 1810.
John Smith Prather V. began his business life as a very young man in LaFayette, Ala. where his father purchased for him a printing office in which he set his own type and printed and published a little country newspaper, "The Chambers County Tribune".
He was always very industrious and very competent, so that whatever he did all his life long was perfectly well done. Finally the war between the states came on. This caused him to enlist in the Confederate Army and he was Commissioned a Lieutenant of Cavalry by the Governor of Alabama and was ordered to report to Gen. Ben McCullough. Gen. McCullough sent him to Gen. Leonidas Polk, at Columbus, Kentucky. Gen. Polk appointed him Post Quartermaster. This position he resigned for "active service in the field".
In resigning he returned himself non commissioned to the ranks but as he was able to furnish his own horse, equipment and body servant he was put into the Cavalry rather than the Infantry service. He was at first placed on Out Post Duty to the evacuation of Columbus and covered the retreat of the Confederate Army to Corinth, Mississippi.
Because of his talents as an executive he rose rapidly in rank and following the Battle of Shiloh he was ordered to report as Colonel Prather to General Joseph Wheeler, chief of Cavalry in June 1862. He participated in all of Gen. Wheeler's great battles and in many of his minor engagements. Col. Prather was repeatedly complimented by Gen. Wheeler in his "General Orders" for bravery and soldierly conduct in battle.
After the battle of Atlanta, he was placed in command of the regiment, the 8th Confederate Cavalry, a Brigade by Gen. Brauregard and Gen. Hardee in Macon, Ga.
He was therefore "Brigadier-by-Brevet" and because of the confusion of Jefferson Davis and the Confederate Government in Richmond his Commission as General could not reach the Army in Georgia at once, he held the rank of Brigadier-By-Brevel until the close of the Civil War.
He was with Gen. Bragg in the battle of Perryville, Murfresboro, Chickamauga and Missionary Ridge, with Gen. Johnston at Dalton, Resaco and Kennesaw, and with Gen. Hood in the severe fighting in and around Atlanta.
He was with Gen. Brauregard at Macon by whose attack orders he with his brigade, attacked Sherman's right from that point to Savannah inflicting much damage on Sherman's army and capturing great numbers of prisoners, for which he received high praise from both Gen. Brauregard and Gen. Hardee.
He was with Gen. Johnston at Columbia, South Carolina, at Averysboro and Bentonville. He surrendered at Hillsboro, North Carolina in May, 1865, handing his sword to Gen. Sherman in person. Col. Prather's name is carved in the Chickamauga Monument as one of the Southern leaders in that great battle. General Sherman offered him a military escort to his home in the South but he unwisely refused this honor saying he could easily find his way on his horse to Montgomery alone.
He intended to publish a news paper in Montgomery and there to begin life anew. But as soon as he reached that city he was arrested by a detachment of Yankee troops and brought up for court martial on a charge of hanging 20 Yankee soldiers from Sherman's army who had killed a South Carolina farmer and his wife and stripped their young daughter of all of her clothing. In his trial for court martial one of the Yankee soldiers who had been a school mate of his swore that Jack Prather was not present when the incident occurred, then the court dismissed the case but after the trial this soldier warned him to leave Montgomery at once and asked him where he would go next. John Smith Prather V. answered that he could go to Opelika for his father's home was not far off from there. He immediately mounted his horse, thanked the soldier and in his battered Confederate Uniform set out for Opelika.
When about night fall he reached the road which led to LaGrange, Ga., he made a sudden decision on not to go to Opelika but rather to LaGrange and to West Point in Ga. where he hoped members of his mother's family would be able to help him get into business there.
A short distance behind him on the road also going toward Opelika and also wearing an old suit of Confederate gray was another soldier on horse back like himself. When John Smith Prather took the road to LaGrange this soldier went on toward Opelika, and that night was murdered on the road. John Smith Prather always believed that he had been Heaven directed to go to LaGrange and that the fate meted out to this soldier in grey had been intended and planned for himself.
In La Grange he learned that in Atlanta the people were begining to breathe again so he moved on farther east to that place. There he purchased an old printing press, rented a shelter and immediately began the printing and distributing in person "The New Era", the first Democratic news/paper published in the South after the War.
This paper was a financial success, and he was soon able to build a house and to bring to it, his young wife and several members of her family who were paralyzed by the terribly new conditions developing in the South.
These relatives thought that if John Smith Prather owned a literary paper or magazine it would furnish them with an opportunity to make a living by publishing in it their own stories and poems.
To assist these relatives of his wife he purchased "The Ladies Gazette". But they had over-rated their talents as poets and novelists and this paper ruined him financially. John Smith Prather then planned to go to Kentucky where he hoped relatives of his own Prather Family could assist him to get into business in Kentucky.
So with their assistance and because of the prominence and wealth of the Prather Family in Kentucky he secured a position in a publishing establishment in Paducah, when he received a telegram from his sister Sarah, who had married William Martin in Atlanta, asking him to return home at once.
Not knowing what was the difficulty in his home he returned to Atlanta at once. He found that William Martin had gotten in trouble with the Government. To free this brother-in-law from imprisonment took two years of effort with influential friends and all the money he could raise.
Of course, this forced him to give up his opening in Paducah and he went therefore into the employment of the Franklin Printing and Publishing House in Atlanta. With this Company he remained for 45 years gradually becoming a member of the firm.
John Smith Prather was a man of the purest integrity but he was hampered in all of his movements by members of his own and his wife's family who thought they could make themselves at home in his home and came to live in it entirely at his expense. One of these stayed for 22 years and died in his house, and others too, for long periods.
John Smith Prather was always interested in the development of the medical profession in Atlanta and was Secretary of The Southern Medical College during all the long years of it's residency of Dr. Thomas S. Powell.
He kept in touch close by also with the Confederate Veterans and was Commandant of Wheeler Cavalry Camp until his death in 1920. He was interred with military honors at his funeral, his body was dressed in his Confederate Uniform and covered with hundreds of tiny Confederate flags and his coffin was conveyed to the hearse under an archway of crossed swords in the hands of Confederate Veterans.
He was buried in De Kalb County Cemetery in Decatur, and on the stone gateway the ladies of the U.D.C. placed a bronze tablet in his honor. On Memorial Day he always led the parade down Peachtree Street and then out to Oakland Cemetery where the decoration of the graves of Confederate Soldiers killed in the Battle of Atlanta took place, and listened there attentively to the orations made in their honor.
His popularity in Atlanta and Georgia was very great and through his influence with the Georgia legislators he controlled the State Printing as long as he lived.
Children of John Prather and Susan Verdery are:
1172 i. Emily Twin15 Prather, born Abt. 1861.
1173 ii. Twin Eva Hampton Prather, born Abt. 1861; died Aft. 1952.
+ 1174 iii. Louise Prather, born Abt. 1863.
1175 iv. Marian Prather, born Abt. 1865.
1176 v. Clio Prather, born Abt. 1866; died 31 October 1903 in Decatur, GA.
Notes for Clio Prather:
Clio became an exquisite pianist but died of heart disease in early womanhood unmarried.
1177 vi. VI John Smith Prather, born Abt. 1867.
Additional information provided by...
FindAGrave Contributor Polsley 48089942.
His date of death is listed on the Franklin Garrett Atlanta Necrology Database.
Reference:
Franklin Garrett Atlanta Necrology: Atlanta Death Certificate; Roll 34, Frame 511, County: Other; Obituary Abstracts, Roll 23, Frame 41, County: Other (date of death listed as 12 Mar 1920); Cemetery Records; Roll 1, Frame 96, County: Dekalb
He is also mentioned in United Daughters of the Confederacy, Roster of Confederate Graves, Volume IX – Third Supplemental Volume, Georgia & Other States (2004) page 9-51 & 9-53, which includes his service record: Rank: Col., Co B 8th AL Infantry (which is mentioned in the bio). His date of birth is listed as 05 Jul 1837 and date of death as 12 Mar 1920.
----------------------------------------
"The Lafayette (AL) Sun" - May 20, 1914:
(In part)..."Your request for information regarding the old Chambers Tribune and the LaFayette Clipper received. As I (Judge James M. Richards - Weatherford, TX), at different times, owned both papers I presume I can give you such information as you desire. The Chambers Tribune was established by Johnson J. Hooper, the author of "Simon Suggs", the most humorous book of the age. Hooper was succeeded several years before the war by Joe Phillips and JNO. S. PRATHER, who continued to publish the Tribune until they went into the army. "Jack" Prather was a gallant and capable soldier and at the close of the war was in the command of a brigade, though he had been commissioned as a Colonel. He now lives in Atlanta, highly honored and respected. At the close of the war, perhaps in the latter part of 1864, publication was suspended. All business houses were out of goods, the able bodied men were off at the front, no support could be given sufficient to buy print paper, hence the suspension...."
--------- Article per Don Clark - LaFayette, AL
John Smith Prather V was born 05 July 1837 in LaGrange, GA, and died 1920. He married Susan Hampton Verdery 1860, daughter of Augustus Verdery and Augustus Verdery. She died 26 June 1928 in Brookhaven, GA.
Notes for John Smith Prather V:
John Smith Prather V. married Susan Hamptom Verdery, daughter of, Augustus Nicholas Verdery, of Augusta, Ga. at the home of her sister, Mrs Warren Akin, in Cassville Ga., in 1810.
John Smith Prather V. began his business life as a very young man in LaFayette, Ala. where his father purchased for him a printing office in which he set his own type and printed and published a little country newspaper, "The Chambers County Tribune".
He was always very industrious and very competent, so that whatever he did all his life long was perfectly well done. Finally the war between the states came on. This caused him to enlist in the Confederate Army and he was Commissioned a Lieutenant of Cavalry by the Governor of Alabama and was ordered to report to Gen. Ben McCullough. Gen. McCullough sent him to Gen. Leonidas Polk, at Columbus, Kentucky. Gen. Polk appointed him Post Quartermaster. This position he resigned for "active service in the field".
In resigning he returned himself non commissioned to the ranks but as he was able to furnish his own horse, equipment and body servant he was put into the Cavalry rather than the Infantry service. He was at first placed on Out Post Duty to the evacuation of Columbus and covered the retreat of the Confederate Army to Corinth, Mississippi.
Because of his talents as an executive he rose rapidly in rank and following the Battle of Shiloh he was ordered to report as Colonel Prather to General Joseph Wheeler, chief of Cavalry in June 1862. He participated in all of Gen. Wheeler's great battles and in many of his minor engagements. Col. Prather was repeatedly complimented by Gen. Wheeler in his "General Orders" for bravery and soldierly conduct in battle.
After the battle of Atlanta, he was placed in command of the regiment, the 8th Confederate Cavalry, a Brigade by Gen. Brauregard and Gen. Hardee in Macon, Ga.
He was therefore "Brigadier-by-Brevet" and because of the confusion of Jefferson Davis and the Confederate Government in Richmond his Commission as General could not reach the Army in Georgia at once, he held the rank of Brigadier-By-Brevel until the close of the Civil War.
He was with Gen. Bragg in the battle of Perryville, Murfresboro, Chickamauga and Missionary Ridge, with Gen. Johnston at Dalton, Resaco and Kennesaw, and with Gen. Hood in the severe fighting in and around Atlanta.
He was with Gen. Brauregard at Macon by whose attack orders he with his brigade, attacked Sherman's right from that point to Savannah inflicting much damage on Sherman's army and capturing great numbers of prisoners, for which he received high praise from both Gen. Brauregard and Gen. Hardee.
He was with Gen. Johnston at Columbia, South Carolina, at Averysboro and Bentonville. He surrendered at Hillsboro, North Carolina in May, 1865, handing his sword to Gen. Sherman in person. Col. Prather's name is carved in the Chickamauga Monument as one of the Southern leaders in that great battle. General Sherman offered him a military escort to his home in the South but he unwisely refused this honor saying he could easily find his way on his horse to Montgomery alone.
He intended to publish a news paper in Montgomery and there to begin life anew. But as soon as he reached that city he was arrested by a detachment of Yankee troops and brought up for court martial on a charge of hanging 20 Yankee soldiers from Sherman's army who had killed a South Carolina farmer and his wife and stripped their young daughter of all of her clothing. In his trial for court martial one of the Yankee soldiers who had been a school mate of his swore that Jack Prather was not present when the incident occurred, then the court dismissed the case but after the trial this soldier warned him to leave Montgomery at once and asked him where he would go next. John Smith Prather V. answered that he could go to Opelika for his father's home was not far off from there. He immediately mounted his horse, thanked the soldier and in his battered Confederate Uniform set out for Opelika.
When about night fall he reached the road which led to LaGrange, Ga., he made a sudden decision on not to go to Opelika but rather to LaGrange and to West Point in Ga. where he hoped members of his mother's family would be able to help him get into business there.
A short distance behind him on the road also going toward Opelika and also wearing an old suit of Confederate gray was another soldier on horse back like himself. When John Smith Prather took the road to LaGrange this soldier went on toward Opelika, and that night was murdered on the road. John Smith Prather always believed that he had been Heaven directed to go to LaGrange and that the fate meted out to this soldier in grey had been intended and planned for himself.
In La Grange he learned that in Atlanta the people were begining to breathe again so he moved on farther east to that place. There he purchased an old printing press, rented a shelter and immediately began the printing and distributing in person "The New Era", the first Democratic news/paper published in the South after the War.
This paper was a financial success, and he was soon able to build a house and to bring to it, his young wife and several members of her family who were paralyzed by the terribly new conditions developing in the South.
These relatives thought that if John Smith Prather owned a literary paper or magazine it would furnish them with an opportunity to make a living by publishing in it their own stories and poems.
To assist these relatives of his wife he purchased "The Ladies Gazette". But they had over-rated their talents as poets and novelists and this paper ruined him financially. John Smith Prather then planned to go to Kentucky where he hoped relatives of his own Prather Family could assist him to get into business in Kentucky.
So with their assistance and because of the prominence and wealth of the Prather Family in Kentucky he secured a position in a publishing establishment in Paducah, when he received a telegram from his sister Sarah, who had married William Martin in Atlanta, asking him to return home at once.
Not knowing what was the difficulty in his home he returned to Atlanta at once. He found that William Martin had gotten in trouble with the Government. To free this brother-in-law from imprisonment took two years of effort with influential friends and all the money he could raise.
Of course, this forced him to give up his opening in Paducah and he went therefore into the employment of the Franklin Printing and Publishing House in Atlanta. With this Company he remained for 45 years gradually becoming a member of the firm.
John Smith Prather was a man of the purest integrity but he was hampered in all of his movements by members of his own and his wife's family who thought they could make themselves at home in his home and came to live in it entirely at his expense. One of these stayed for 22 years and died in his house, and others too, for long periods.
John Smith Prather was always interested in the development of the medical profession in Atlanta and was Secretary of The Southern Medical College during all the long years of it's residency of Dr. Thomas S. Powell.
He kept in touch close by also with the Confederate Veterans and was Commandant of Wheeler Cavalry Camp until his death in 1920. He was interred with military honors at his funeral, his body was dressed in his Confederate Uniform and covered with hundreds of tiny Confederate flags and his coffin was conveyed to the hearse under an archway of crossed swords in the hands of Confederate Veterans.
He was buried in De Kalb County Cemetery in Decatur, and on the stone gateway the ladies of the U.D.C. placed a bronze tablet in his honor. On Memorial Day he always led the parade down Peachtree Street and then out to Oakland Cemetery where the decoration of the graves of Confederate Soldiers killed in the Battle of Atlanta took place, and listened there attentively to the orations made in their honor.
His popularity in Atlanta and Georgia was very great and through his influence with the Georgia legislators he controlled the State Printing as long as he lived.
Children of John Prather and Susan Verdery are:
1172 i. Emily Twin15 Prather, born Abt. 1861.
1173 ii. Twin Eva Hampton Prather, born Abt. 1861; died Aft. 1952.
+ 1174 iii. Louise Prather, born Abt. 1863.
1175 iv. Marian Prather, born Abt. 1865.
1176 v. Clio Prather, born Abt. 1866; died 31 October 1903 in Decatur, GA.
Notes for Clio Prather:
Clio became an exquisite pianist but died of heart disease in early womanhood unmarried.
1177 vi. VI John Smith Prather, born Abt. 1867.
Additional information provided by...
FindAGrave Contributor Polsley 48089942.
His date of death is listed on the Franklin Garrett Atlanta Necrology Database.
Reference:
Franklin Garrett Atlanta Necrology: Atlanta Death Certificate; Roll 34, Frame 511, County: Other; Obituary Abstracts, Roll 23, Frame 41, County: Other (date of death listed as 12 Mar 1920); Cemetery Records; Roll 1, Frame 96, County: Dekalb
He is also mentioned in United Daughters of the Confederacy, Roster of Confederate Graves, Volume IX – Third Supplemental Volume, Georgia & Other States (2004) page 9-51 & 9-53, which includes his service record: Rank: Col., Co B 8th AL Infantry (which is mentioned in the bio). His date of birth is listed as 05 Jul 1837 and date of death as 12 Mar 1920.
----------------------------------------
"The Lafayette (AL) Sun" - May 20, 1914:
(In part)..."Your request for information regarding the old Chambers Tribune and the LaFayette Clipper received. As I (Judge James M. Richards - Weatherford, TX), at different times, owned both papers I presume I can give you such information as you desire. The Chambers Tribune was established by Johnson J. Hooper, the author of "Simon Suggs", the most humorous book of the age. Hooper was succeeded several years before the war by Joe Phillips and JNO. S. PRATHER, who continued to publish the Tribune until they went into the army. "Jack" Prather was a gallant and capable soldier and at the close of the war was in the command of a brigade, though he had been commissioned as a Colonel. He now lives in Atlanta, highly honored and respected. At the close of the war, perhaps in the latter part of 1864, publication was suspended. All business houses were out of goods, the able bodied men were off at the front, no support could be given sufficient to buy print paper, hence the suspension...."
--------- Article per Don Clark - LaFayette, AL
Notes for John Smith Prather V:
John Smith Prather V. married Susan Hamptom Verdery, daughter of, Augustus Nicholas Verdery, of Augusta, Ga. at the home of her sister, Mrs Warren Akin, in Cassville Ga., in 1810.
John Smith Prather V. began his business life as a very young man in LaFayette, Ala. where his father purchased for him a printing office in which he set his own type and printed and published a little country newspaper, "The Chambers County Tribune".
He was always very industrious and very competent, so that whatever he did all his life long was perfectly well done. Finally the war between the states came on. This caused him to enlist in the Confederate Army and he was Commissioned a Lieutenant of Cavalry by the Governor of Alabama and was ordered to report to Gen. Ben McCullough. Gen. McCullough sent him to Gen. Leonidas Polk, at Columbus, Kentucky. Gen. Polk appointed him Post Quartermaster. This position he resigned for "active service in the field".
In resigning he returned himself non commissioned to the ranks but as he was able to furnish his own horse, equipment and body servant he was put into the Cavalry rather than the Infantry service. He was at first placed on Out Post Duty to the evacuation of Columbus and covered the retreat of the Confederate Army to Corinth, Mississippi.
Because of his talents as an executive he rose rapidly in rank and following the Battle of Shiloh he was ordered to report as Colonel Prather to General Joseph Wheeler, chief of Cavalry in June 1862. He participated in all of Gen. Wheeler's great battles and in many of his minor engagements. Col. Prather was repeatedly complimented by Gen. Wheeler in his "General Orders" for bravery and soldierly conduct in battle.
After the battle of Atlanta, he was placed in command of the regiment, the 8th Confederate Cavalry, a Brigade by Gen. Brauregard and Gen. Hardee in Macon, Ga.
He was therefore "Brigadier-by-Brevet" and because of the confusion of Jefferson Davis and the Confederate Government in Richmond his Commission as General could not reach the Army in Georgia at once, he held the rank of Brigadier-By-Brevel until the close of the Civil War.
He was with Gen. Bragg in the battle of Perryville, Murfresboro, Chickamauga and Missionary Ridge, with Gen. Johnston at Dalton, Resaco and Kennesaw, and with Gen. Hood in the severe fighting in and around Atlanta.
He was with Gen. Brauregard at Macon by whose attack orders he with his brigade, attacked Sherman's right from that point to Savannah inflicting much damage on Sherman's army and capturing great numbers of prisoners, for which he received high praise from both Gen. Brauregard and Gen. Hardee.
He was with Gen. Johnston at Columbia, South Carolina, at Averysboro and Bentonville. He surrendered at Hillsboro, North Carolina in May, 1865, handing his sword to Gen. Sherman in person. Col. Prather's name is carved in the Chickamauga Monument as one of the Southern leaders in that great battle. General Sherman offered him a military escort to his home in the South but he unwisely refused this honor saying he could easily find his way on his horse to Montgomery alone.
He intended to publish a news paper in Montgomery and there to begin life anew. But as soon as he reached that city he was arrested by a detachment of Yankee troops and brought up for court martial on a charge of hanging 20 Yankee soldiers from Sherman's army who had killed a South Carolina farmer and his wife and stripped their young daughter of all of her clothing. In his trial for court martial one of the Yankee soldiers who had been a school mate of his swore that Jack Prather was not present when the incident occurred, then the court dismissed the case but after the trial this soldier warned him to leave Montgomery at once and asked him where he would go next. John Smith Prather V. answered that he could go to Opelika for his father's home was not far off from there. He immediately mounted his horse, thanked the soldier and in his battered Confederate Uniform set out for Opelika.
When about night fall he reached the road which led to LaGrange, Ga., he made a sudden decision on not to go to Opelika but rather to LaGrange and to West Point in Ga. where he hoped members of his mother's family would be able to help him get into business there.
A short distance behind him on the road also going toward Opelika and also wearing an old suit of Confederate gray was another soldier on horse back like himself. When John Smith Prather took the road to LaGrange this soldier went on toward Opelika, and that night was murdered on the road. John Smith Prather always believed that he had been Heaven directed to go to LaGrange and that the fate meted out to this soldier in grey had been intended and planned for himself.
In La Grange he learned that in Atlanta the people were begining to breathe again so he moved on farther east to that place. There he purchased an old printing press, rented a shelter and immediately began the printing and distributing in person "The New Era", the first Democratic news/paper published in the South after the War.
This paper was a financial success, and he was soon able to build a house and to bring to it, his young wife and several members of her family who were paralyzed by the terribly new conditions developing in the South.
These relatives thought that if John Smith Prather owned a literary paper or magazine it would furnish them with an opportunity to make a living by publishing in it their own stories and poems.
To assist these relatives of his wife he purchased "The Ladies Gazette". But they had over-rated their talents as poets and novelists and this paper ruined him financially. John Smith Prather then planned to go to Kentucky where he hoped relatives of his own Prather Family could assist him to get into business in Kentucky.
So with their assistance and because of the prominence and wealth of the Prather Family in Kentucky he secured a position in a publishing establishment in Paducah, when he received a telegram from his sister Sarah, who had married William Martin in Atlanta, asking him to return home at once.
Not knowing what was the difficulty in his home he returned to Atlanta at once. He found that William Martin had gotten in trouble with the Government. To free this brother-in-law from imprisonment took two years of effort with influential friends and all the money he could raise.
Of course, this forced him to give up his opening in Paducah and he went therefore into the employment of the Franklin Printing and Publishing House in Atlanta. With this Company he remained for 45 years gradually becoming a member of the firm.
John Smith Prather was a man of the purest integrity but he was hampered in all of his movements by members of his own and his wife's family who thought they could make themselves at home in his home and came to live in it entirely at his expense. One of these stayed for 22 years and died in his house, and others too, for long periods.
John Smith Prather was always interested in the development of the medical profession in Atlanta and was Secretary of The Southern Medical College during all the long years of it's residency of Dr. Thomas S. Powell.
He kept in touch close by also with the Confederate Veterans and was Commandant of Wheeler Cavalry Camp until his death in 1920. He was interred with military honors at his funeral, his body was dressed in his Confederate Uniform and covered with hundreds of tiny Confederate flags and his coffin was conveyed to the hearse under an archway of crossed swords in the hands of Confederate Veterans.
He was buried in De Kalb County Cemetery in Decatur, and on the stone gateway the ladies of the U.D.C. placed a bronze tablet in his honor. On Memorial Day he always led the parade down Peachtree Street and then out to Oakland Cemetery where the decoration of the graves of Confederate Soldiers killed in the Battle of Atlanta took place, and listened there attentively to the orations made in their honor.
His popularity in Atlanta and Georgia was very great and through his influence with the Georgia legislators he controlled the State Printing as long as he lived.
Children of John Prather and Susan Verdery are:
1172 i. Emily Twin15 Prather, born Abt. 1861.
1173 ii. Twin Eva Hampton Prather, born Abt. 1861; died Aft. 1952.
+ 1174 iii. Louise Prather, born Abt. 1863.
1175 iv. Marian Prather, born Abt. 1865.
1176 v. Clio Prather, born Abt. 1866; died 31 October 1903 in Decatur, GA.
Notes for Clio Prather:
Clio became an exquisite pianist but died of heart disease in early womanhood unmarried.
1177 vi. VI John Smith Prather, born Abt. 1867.
Additional information provided by...
FindAGrave Contributor Polsley 48089942.
His date of death is listed on the Franklin Garrett Atlanta Necrology Database.
Reference:
Franklin Garrett Atlanta Necrology: Atlanta Death Certificate; Roll 34, Frame 511, County: Other; Obituary Abstracts, Roll 23, Frame 41, County: Other (date of death listed as 12 Mar 1920); Cemetery Records; Roll 1, Frame 96, County: Dekalb
He is also mentioned in United Daughters of the Confederacy, Roster of Confederate Graves, Volume IX – Third Supplemental Volume, Georgia & Other States (2004) page 9-51 & 9-53, which includes his service record: Rank: Col., Co B 8th AL Infantry (which is mentioned in the bio). His date of birth is listed as 05 Jul 1837 and date of death as 12 Mar 1920.
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"The Lafayette (AL) Sun" - May 20, 1914:
(In part)..."Your request for information regarding the old Chambers Tribune and the LaFayette Clipper received. As I (Judge James M. Richards - Weatherford, TX), at different times, owned both papers I presume I can give you such information as you desire. The Chambers Tribune was established by Johnson J. Hooper, the author of "Simon Suggs", the most humorous book of the age. Hooper was succeeded several years before the war by Joe Phillips and JNO. S. PRATHER, who continued to publish the Tribune until they went into the army. "Jack" Prather was a gallant and capable soldier and at the close of the war was in the command of a brigade, though he had been commissioned as a Colonel. He now lives in Atlanta, highly honored and respected. At the close of the war, perhaps in the latter part of 1864, publication was suspended. All business houses were out of goods, the able bodied men were off at the front, no support could be given sufficient to buy print paper, hence the suspension...."
--------- Article per Don Clark - LaFayette, AL
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